Warren Commission Report Research Articles

Cruising for Conspirators: How a New Orleans DA Prosecuted the Kennedy Assassination as a Sex Crime by Alecia P. Long

Reviewed by: Cruising for Conspirators: How a New Orleans DA Prosecuted the Kennedy Assassination as a Sex Crime by Alecia P. Long Michael Wade Cruising for Conspirators: How a New Orleans DA Prosecuted the Kennedy Assassination as a Sex Crime. By Alecia P. Long. Boundless South. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2021. Pp. xvi, 247. $28.00, ISBN 978-1-4696-6273-2.) Cruising for Conspirators: How a New Orleans DA Prosecuted the Kennedy Assassination as a Sex Crime analyzes Jim Garrison’s 1969 prosecution of retired executive Clay Shaw for his alleged part in an illusory New Orleans–based conspiracy to kill President John F. Kennedy in 1963. In providing crucial historical context for this crusade, Louisiana State University history professor Alecia P. Long argues that Garrison’s “homosexual thrill killing” campaign emanated from the Crescent City’s homophobic criminal justice system and public fascination with conspiracy theories linked to uncertainties about the post-assassination Warren Commission report (p. 108). With impressive research, abundant detail, and careful analysis, Long has crafted a convincing story of intolerance and abuse of power in that era. By 1960, New Orleans reformers and state legislators had “weaponized homophobia” with laws that linked homosexuality with criminal deviance (p. 8). This climate enabled first-termer Garrison’s new reason for President Kennedy’s assassination, focused on gays in the French Quarter. The Big Easy might be soft on organized crime, but not on deviance. Allegations that New Orleans native Lee Harvey Oswald was homosexual surfaced soon after JFK’s death. Airline pilot David Ferrie and the shadowy Clay Bertrand were the first mentioned. The Warren Commission was skeptical but was worried about connections between criminality and gays. So were the report’s critics. Jim Garrison was one of them. Reelected in 1966, as arrests of homosexuals were outpacing every other criminal category, Garrison returned to the stories discounted by the Warren Commission. Based on a new informant’s testimony, he homed in on Clay Shaw, thought to have used Clay Bertrand as an alias. This pursuit led to Shaw’s arrest in early 1967 and the subsequent exposure of his private life. Though he steadfastly maintained his innocence, Louisiana’s lax discovery laws ensured his indictment, while the “circus atmosphere” in the period preceding his January 1969 trial made his life a living hell (p. 119). An all-male jury required only fifty minutes to find him not guilty. Shaw later filed a civil suit claiming damages for violation of his civil rights. Finally decided after his death, it was unsuccessful. Long’s book is a worthy addition to Kennedy assassination literature because it reveals the dangers of conspiracy theories. Garrison further tarnished the image of New Orleans, already in tatters in the wake of the 1960 school desegregation crisis. Given today’s unsteady state of the Union and the existential perils of climate change, Americans should examine the threats posed by the conspiracy theorists and magical thinkers purporting to explain our circumstance. Ideas, both good and bad, are important. Knowing the difference between the good and the bad is absolutely critical. [End Page 395] Michael Wade Appalachian State University Copyright © 2023 Southern Historical Association

The Iconoclastic Imagination and the Meaning of Rhetorical Criticism

<i>The Iconoclastic Imagination</i> and the Meaning of Rhetorical Criticism

Reframing “official memory”: Don DeLillo’s Libra and the House Select Committee on Assassinations

Critics have examined DeLillo’s appropriation of The Warren Commission Report in Libra , but the novel responds to more than this fundamental document of the assassination archive. Libra should also be situated within the investigations into the activities of the CIA in the 1970s. These investigations conducted by the Rockefeller Commission, the Church Committee, and the Pike Committee provide the historical background crucial for comprehending DeLillo’s fictional intervention into the lingering JFK assassination controversy. These investigations also spawned the House Select Committee on Assassinations in 1976, whose work leaves “the blank spaces in the known record” (457) that Libra attempts to fill, primarily Lee Harvey Oswald’s connections to American intelligence and the secret war against Castro. In doing so, Libra provides a summary of the very real efforts of the CIA to overthrow Castro, from the joint CIA-Mafia assassination plots and the Bay of Pigs invasion to Operation Mongoose.

Additional Data on the Shooting of President Kennedy

The journalhas performed a great service in persuading Humes, Boswell, and Finck to answer extended queries about the details of the autopsy of President Kennedy. 1,2 They replied directly to many of the questions raised by the critics of the Warren Commission report, an excellent move toward full disclosure. However, we must remember that Humes, Boswell, and Finck wrote their autopsy report without seeing the color photographs or studying in detail the roentgenograms of the body that were taken at the autopsy. The photographs had been confiscated by the Attorney General (the President's brother) without being developed, and they were then turned over to the National Archives (from which they have never been released). The basis for this confiscation was the family's desire that the photographs of the President's exploded head not appear in every bookstore window, as they would have had See also pp 1507, 1540, and 1552.

The injuries to JFK.

To the Editor. —Rather than quell doubts about President Kennedy's autopsy findings, I fear that Drs Humes' and Boswell's 1,2 remarks in JAMA will only serve to heighten the level of disbelief in their observations. Neither Humes nor Boswell addressed their critics on contradictory evidence that subsequent government investigations have consistently revealed, namely, that neither the available photographs nor the roentgenograms support Humes' and Boswell's claims regarding the entrance location of the fatal skull wound. At least three qualified groups have reviewed the roentgenographic and photographic evidence and are unanimous in claiming that Humes' and Boswell's claims in the Warren Commission Report erred in placing the fatal skull entrance wound at the base of the skull just above the hairline (2.5 cm to the right and slightly above the external occipital protuberance according to Humes both in the JAMA interview, and before that, in his Warren Commission testimony). The Clark

A Review of Reasonable Doubt

Abstract In every national poll that has been taken in the United States since the assassination of John F. Kennedy on 22 Nov. 1963, a large majority of Americans have expressed their unwillingness to accept the principal conclusion of the Warren Commission Report (WCR), namely, that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in the planning and execution of the President's murder in Dallas 23 years ago. While it is obviously true that guilt or innocence and the question of conspiracy are not matters to be ultimately determined by popular vote, the continuing and overwhelming rejection of the findings of a Presidential blue ribbon panel is not a matter that should be casually ignored. When one considers the intensive, well-orchestrated efforts by various governmental agencies and powerful segments of the news media during the past two decades (frequently associated with ad hominem attacks against one or more of the WCR critics) to convince the American public of the thoroughness and validity of the original investigation, then the repudiation of the WCR by a substantial majority of people in this country (and throughout the world) assumes a much greater significance.

A Review of Medicolegal Investigation of the President John F. Kennedy Murder

Abstract This book presents a rehash of the same old material we have heard and read over and over again for the past 15 years. The book suffers from two glaring deficiencies. First, the author is a forensic biologist, not a forensic pathologist, and second, the author has taken his material almost exclusively from the Warren Commission Report because he had no access to any of the material contained in the National Archives.

Internal-External Control and Attitudes Toward Energy Conservation and Warren Commission Report

Summary The present investigation examined the relationship between college students' locus of control and attitudes toward energy conservation. It was predicted that the more external orientation would relate to the person's belief that energy resources were controlled by powerful others whose manipulation created energy shortage, and personal conservation would not help the situation. The present study also compared 1977 students' reactions to the Warren Commission Report to those of the sixties, to study changing attitudes among college students. Three hundred forty-seven male and female college students were administered the Rotter I-E scale and a questionnaire that included items dealing with energy and the Warren Commission Report. Analysis of variance supported the hypothesis: males were found to be more internal than females, and those who believed in energy shortage and conservation were more internal than those who believed otherwise. A similar analysis of the responses to the Warren Report show...

The Swine Flu Immunization Program: Scientific Venture or Political Folly?

The author of this Article, an internationally recognized coroner perhaps best known among laymen for his incisive and tenacious criticism of the Warren Commission report on the Kennedy assassination, turns his attention to the federal government's 1976--1977 Swine Flu Immunization Program. Dr. Wecht contends that although this program may have been viewed by its key proponents as having great public health importance, or perhaps even political value, its creation and continuation nevertheless were scientifically unjustified. Furthermore, he contends, the federal government failed to inform the public adequately of important facts about the program's origins and progress, and it mismanaged the program in several important respects. Among the topics he discusses are swine flu's epidemiological history (including the 1976 Fort Dix outbreak that propelled swine flu into the national consciousness); the key elements leading to the government's decision to immunize; the government's failure to reevaluate the program seriously as problems arose; the shortcomings of the federal swine flu statute; the inadequacy of the government's investigation of the deaths of three persons in Pittsburgh within a few hours after being vaccinated (a matter that was of immediate concern to the author in his role as Coroner of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania); the long-delayed termination of the program following the emergence of a possible statistical link between the immunizations and an increase in the incidence of the Guillain-Barré Syndrome; the financial and human costs of the program; and the need for calmer, more objective decision making in future situations where immunization of the general populace is being considered.

Physicist confirms Warren report

Scientific analysis of crimes is not always taken seriously enough by lawyers; often they do not have the scientific training and insight to see the implications of a hard piece of physical evidence. Dr Brian Jones of Lancaster University, who was asked to investigate some of the events leading to President J F Kennedy's death after the publication of the Warren Commission's report, is one who holds this opinion.

Interpersonal trust, internal-external control, and the Warren Commission Report.

Interpersonal trust, internal-external control, and the Warren Commission Report.

RECOMMENDATION NO. 9

By this time everyone who wanted it has had the opportunity to read and digest the Warren Commission's report on the assassination of President Kennedy. To countless others, at least the main points of the study are familiar. No one can dispute the thoroughness of the report and the meticulousness with which the ten-month investigation was conducted. On the other hand, one recommendation perhaps deserves some more study. Less emphasized than the others, it is no less important and, indeed, may become very important in its possibilities for difficulty in accomplishment. Recommendation No. 9 of the<i>Report of the</i><i>Warren Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy</i>reads: The Commission recommends that the President's physician always accompany him during his travels and occupy a position near the President where he can be immediately available in case of any emergency. In spite of the fact that in the case of President

Warren Commission Report

Warren Commission Report